merely natural effects; as to be warm is before the fire, and cannot be in our choice directly and immediately. That which is the prime and proper action of the will, that only is subject to a command; that is, to choose or refuse the sin. The passion,' that is, the proper effect or impress upon the fancy or body, that is natural, and is determined to the particular by the mixture of something natural with the act of the will; as if an apprehension of future evils be mingled with the refusing sin, that is, if it be the cause of it: then fear is the passion that is effected by it. If the feeling some evil be the cause of the nolition, then sorrow is the effect; and fear also may produce sorrow. So that the passion, that is, the natural impress upon the man, cannot be the effect of a commandment, but the principle of that passion is; we are commanded to refuse sin, to eschew evil,'-that is the word of the Scripture: but because we usually do feel the evils of sin, and we have reason to fear worse, and sorrow is the natural effect of such a feeling, and such a fear,-therefore the Scripture calling us to repentance, that is, a new life, a dying unto sin, and a living unto righteousness, expresses it by sorrow, and mourning, and weeping; but these are not the duty, but the expressions, or the instruments of that which is a duty. So that if any man who hates sin and leaves it, cannot yet find the sharpness of such a sorrow as he feels in other sad accidents, there can nothing be said to it, but that the duty itself is not clothed with those circumstances, which are apt to produce that passion; it is not an eschewing of sin upon considerations of a present or a feared trouble, but upon some other principle; or that the consideration is not deep and pressing, or that the person is of an unapt disposition to those sensible effects. The Italian and his wife, who by chance espied a serpent under the shade of their vines, were both equal haters of the little beast; but the wife only cried out, and the man killed it, but with as great a regret and horror at the sight of it as his wife, though he did not so express it. But when a little after they espied a lizard, and she cried again, he told her, that he perceived her trouble was not always derived from reasonable apprehensions, and that what could spring only from images of things and fancies of persons, was not considerable by a just value. This is the case of our sorrowing. Some express it by tears, some by penances and corporal inflictions, some by more effective and material mortifications of it: but he that kills it, is the greatest enemy. But those persons who can be sorrowful and violently moved for a trifling interest, and upon the arrests of fancy,-if they find these easy meltings and sensitive afflictions upon the accounts of their sins, are not to please themselves at all, unless, when they have cried out, they also kill the serpent. 20. I cannot therefore at all suspect that man's repentance, who hates sin, and chooses righteousness, and walks in it, though he do not weep, or feel the troubles of a mother mourning over the hearse of her only son; but yet such a sensitive grief is of great use to these purposes. I. If it do not proceed from the present sense of the divine judgment, yet it supplies that, and feels an evil from its own apprehension, which is not yet felt from the divine infliction. II. It prevents God's anger, by being a punishment of ourselves, a condemnation of the sinner, and a taking vengeance of ourselves, for our having offended God. And therefore it is, consequently to this, agreed on all hands, that the greater the sorrow is, the less necessity there is of any outward affliction: Ut possit lacrimis æquare labores h, According to the old rule of the penitentiaries. Sitque modus culpæ justæ moderatio pœnæ, Which general measure of repentances, as it is of use in the particular of which I am now discoursing, so it effects this persuasion, that external mortifications and austerities are not any part of original and essential duty, but significations of the inward repentance unto men; and suppletories of it before God; that when we cannot feel the trouble of mind, we may at least hate sin upon another account, even upon the superinduced evils upon our bodies; for all affliction is nothing but sorrow; "Gravis animi pœna est, quem post factum pœnitet," said Publius: "To repent is a grievous punishment;" and the old man in the comedy calls it so. Cur meam senectutem hujus sollicito amentiâ? an h Virg. Æn. 2. 362. Why do I grieve my old age for his madness, that I should suffer punishment for his sins?" Grieving was his punishment. III. This sensitive sorrow is very apt to extinguish sin, it being of a symbolical nature to the design of God, when he strikes a sinner for his amendment: it makes sin to be uneasy to him; and not only to be displeasing to his Spirit, but to his sense, and consequently, that it hath no port to enter any more. IV. It is a great satisfaction to an inquisitive conscience, to whom it is not sufficient that he does repent, unless he be able to prove it by signs and proper indications. 21. The sum is this. 1. No man can, in any sense, be said to be a true penitent, unless he wishes he had never done the sin. 2. But he that is told that his sin is presently par-doned upon repentance, that is, upon leaving it, and asking forgiveness; and that the former pleasure shall not now hurt him, he hath no reason to wish that he had never done it. 3. But, to make it reasonable to wish that the sin had never been done, there must be the feeling or fear of some evil. Conscia mens ut cuique sua est, ita concipit, intrà Pectora, pro meritis spemque metumque suis. 4. According as is the nature of that evil feared or felt, so is the passion effected, of hatred, or sorrow. 5. Whatever the passion be, it must be totally exclusive of all affection to sin, and produce enmity and fighting against it, until it be mortified. 6. In the whole progression of this mortification, it is more than probable that some degrees of sensitive trouble will come in at some angle or other. 7. Though the duty of penitential sorrow itself be completed in nolitione peccati,' in the hating of sin, and ourselves for doing it, yet the more penal that hate is, the more it ministers to many excellent purposes of repentance. 22. But because some persons do not feel this sensitive sorrow, they begin to suspect their repentance, and therefore they are taught to supply this want by a reflex act, that is, to be sorrowful because they are not sorrowful. This I must needs say is a fine device, where it can be made to signify something that is material. But I fear, it will not often. For i Terent. Andr. v. 3. 16. Schmieder. how can a man be sorrowful for not being sorrowful? For either he hath reason at first to be sorrowful, or he hath not. If he hath not, why should he be sorrowful for not doing an unreasonable act? If he hath reason, and knows it, it is certain he will be as sorrowful as that cause so apprehended can effect: but he can be no more, and so much he cannot choose but be. But if there be cause to be sorrowful, and the man knows it not, then he cannot yet grieve for that; for he knows no cause, and that is all one as if he had none. But if there be indeed a cause which he hath not considered, then let him be called upon to consider that, and then he will be directly and truly sorrowful, when he hath considered it; and hath reason to be sorrowful because he had not considered it before, that is, because he had not repented sooner; but to be sorrowful because he is not sorrowful, can have no other good meaning but this: we are to endeavour to be displeased at sin, and to use all the means we can to hate it; that is, when we find not any sensitive sorrow or pungency of spirit, let us contend to make our intellectual sorrow as great as we can. And if we perceive or suspect we have not true repentance, let us beg of God to give it; and let us use the proper means of obtaining the grace; and if we are uncertain concerning the actions of our own heart, let us supply them by prayer, and holy desires; that if we cannot perceive the grace in the proper shape, and by its own symptoms and indications, we may be made, in some measure, humbly confident by other images and reflections, by seeing the grace in another shape: so David; "Concupivi desiderare justificationes tuas;" "I have desired to desire thy justifications;" that is, either I have prayed for that grace, or I have seen that I have that desire, not by a direct observation, but by some other signification. But it is certain, no man can be sorrowful for not being sorrowful, if he means the same kind and manner of sorrow; as there cannot be two, where there is not one; and there cannot be a reflex ray, where there was not a direct. 23. But if there be such difficulty in the questions of our own sorrow, it were very well, that even this part of repentance should be conducted, as all the other ought,-by the ministry of a spiritual man; that it may be better instructed, and prudently managed, and better discerned, and led on to its proper effects. But when it is so helped forward, it is more than contrition,-it is confession also; of which I am yet to give in special accounts.. SECTION III. Of the Natures and Difference of Attrition and Contrition. 24. ALL the passions of the irascible faculty are that sorrow, in some sense or other, which will produce repentance. Repentance cannot kill sin, but by withdrawing the will from it: and the will is not to be withdrawn, but by complying with the contrary affection to that, which before did accompany it in evil. Now whatever that affection was, pleasure was the product, it was that which nursed or begot the sin : now as this pleasure might proceed from hope, from possession, from sense, from fancy, from desire, and all the passions of the concupiscible appetite; so when there is a displeasure conceived, it will help to destroy sin, from what passion soever, of what faculty soever, that displeasure can be produced. 25. If the displeasure at sin proceeds from any passion of the irascible faculty, it is that which those divines, who understand the meaning of their own words of art, commonly call ' attrition,' that is,―a resolving against sin, the resolution proceeding from any principle, that is troublesome and dolorous:-and in what degree of good that is (as appears in the stating of this question), it is acceptable to God; not an acceptable repentance, for it is not so much; but it is a good beginning of it, an acceptable introduction to it; and must, in its very nature, suppose a sorrow, or displeasure,-in which although according to the quality of the motives of attrition, or the disposition of the penitent, there is more or less sensitive trouble respectively, yet in all there must be so much sorrow or displeasure, as to cause a dereliction of the, sin, or a resolution, at least, to leave it. 26. But there are some natures so ingenuous, and there are some periods of repentance so perfect, and some penitents have so far proceeded in the methods of holiness, and pardon, that they are fallen out with sin upon the stock of |